Contested zoning

The latest General Plan Update proposed for San Diego County includes more than 200 properties whose owners are contesting zoning recommendations from county planners. If supervisors allow the requests, the county could be sued for adopting a plan that conflicts with the related environmental impact report. Impact designations by county staff:

Minimum: 80

Moderate: 56

Major: 86

Source: San Diego County Department of Planning and Land Use

State law requires every city and county to adopt a general plan, a long-term blueprint that spells out where development should be allowed, where farmers should farm and where open space should be preserved.

The same rules call for local governments to update those plans regularly. In San Diego County, the update process has proved anything but regular.

Elected officials here have worked for 13 years to enact new zoning rules, in part because they granted themselves authority to insert their own recommendations into what staff and community planning groups proposed.

Supervisors defend the practice, called board referrals, saying it is the board that is ultimately responsible for adopting the plan.

“Referrals are a mechanism for property owners who disagree with staff’s recommendations,” said Dianne Jacob, the East County supervisor who submitted dozens of proposed changes to the general plan update.

“They have another chance to be heard,” she added. “It may not yield the result the property owner wants. I view it as ensuring due process before a final determination is made.”

Critics say the referrals undermine public planning and allow too much influence for the politically connected.

Planning officials in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties say they have never heard of giving elected officials authority to rewrite zoning recommendations parcel by parcel while in the process of updating the general plan.

“That’s new to me,” L.A. County planning director Richard Bruckner said when asked about the practice. “I’ve never seen anything like that, but I will say it clearly is their responsibility and their prerogative to enact zone changes.”

Supervisors created the referral process early in the last decade after property owners began digesting the recommendations coming out of the county Department of Planning and Land Use.

By 2003, hundreds of board referrals had been sent to staff planners, who were asked to evaluate each of them and incorporate those suggestions into their next draft.

Subsequent recommendations from the planning staff have drawn second-guessing from supervisors and developers.

The most recent plan includes more than 200 “property-specific requests” filed in the wake of the public hearings the board conducted late last year to consider the update.

More than 80 of those are considered by staff to be “major” changes that could require the county to perform a new environmental review or expose the county to a lawsuit.

Maureen McAvey of the Urban Land Institute, a research and education nonprofit in Washington D.C., said the referrals amount to “spot zoning,” which is not among the best practices in long-term planning.

“The problem with doing this sort of referral is the question becomes, where is the community voice being heard?” she said. “Often the community as a larger voice may have needs” beyond an individual landowner.

“These are thorny issues,” McAvey said. “Nobody wants to live next to a hospital because of the sirens, but part of a city’s job is to balance that voice.”

Some community groups that spent years attending meetings and studying staff proposals worry about the influence campaign donors may be having on the process.

Susan Riggs Tinsky of the San Diego Housing Federation said it is “extremely infuriating” to see community-supported zoning plans go by the wayside in favor of individual property owners or developers.

“The organizational interests are there to protect the broader interests and when one property owner can go in there and unravel the intent, it’s extremely shortsighted,” she said. “All we can do is try and continue to make arguments in the public interest and hope for the best.”

Retiree Lawrence Saunders said the zoning recommendation from county planners would drive down the value of 100 or so acres he owns in Fallbrook.

Saunders wants the county to grant him the right to subdivide the three parcels into lots as small as four acres, rather than the 20-acre minimum he now confronts.

“In my experience with the staff, they’re coming from nowhere and know nothing,” he said. “They don’t even know where the property is, let alone our needs and our final objectives.”

Some of the referrals from county supervisors are tied to people who have donated to the officials’ political campaigns.

In Harmony Grove, just west of Escondido, for example, the owner and consultants for a 111-acre housing proposal contributed to Bill Horn, the five-term supervisor who was just selected as chairman of the county board.

Horn submitted a referral that would change the zoning from a maximum of one house every four acres to allow two homes on every acre.

“In 1994, I ran as a property-rights advocate and I have been re-elected four times because of my views,” said Horn, who submitted zone changes on more than 140 properties. “I have been true to my word on this issue and the voters recognize that.”

Paul Shigley is a land-use journalist and co-author of the “Guide to California Planning” textbook.

He said it is impossible for local officials to set politics aside when they write new zoning rules because of the amount of money at stake and the hugely divergent interests.

“In San Diego County, people envision very different futures for the unincorporated areas,” he said. “That puts county supervisors in a really difficult position. They are not going to satisfy everyone.”

Supervisors will consider the latest draft general plan on March 16, although it is not expected to be approved that day.